


prometheus

by moroodors



Series: stanuary 2020 [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: A little bit of fluff, Angst, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Happy Ending, Memory Loss, Stan O' War, Stan O' War II, Stanuary, Stanuary 2020, fire metaphors out the wazoo, its mostly angst, little bit of language, lots of tone shifts!, week one: burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 15:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moroodors/pseuds/moroodors
Summary: in the same way that trees were wood and brothers were family, Stan was fire.an uncontrollable mass, sparking, hissing, crawling and consuming everything in its path. his arteries bleed the same red as tendrils of flame, becoming gasoline for the quick lighter of his heart, muscles and tendons becoming wood, bones branches, his organs sizzling until they rise up out of his mouth and nose and eyes as smoke.written for stanuary 2020. week one: burn (with the prompts: smoke and fire.)
Relationships: Stanley Pines & Dipper Pines, Stanley Pines & Mabel Pines, Stanley Pines & Stanford Pines, stanley pines & bill cipher
Series: stanuary 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572886
Comments: 11
Kudos: 68
Collections: Stanuary





	prometheus

**Author's Note:**

> "Are you scared to death to live?  
I've been running all my life  
Just to find a home that's for the restless"  
still breathing, green day.
> 
> warnings in atbash cipher for (kinda) spoilers:  
dzimrmt: xlmgzrmh ozmtfztv, gslfts mlg z olg lu rg. hgzm hsllgh hlnvlmv drgs z tfm, zmw wlvh proo srn - rg'h mlg wvhxiryvw rm nfxs wvgzro yfg rg wlvh szkkvm. gsviv'h z olg lu uriv.  


The wax dripped on his fingertips. 

An artificial bright blue with a blackening wick, dancing a reflection in his pupils, flame that represented a time of something else- something happier, warmer, better. 

He didn’t pay attention to the momentary heat brought by the wax, only observing it dry and darken, like the deep sea on a stormy night, hardening and able to simply be brushed off like it wasn’t even there in the first place. 

It was Stanley Pines’ birthday and he couldn’t afford a cake. He floated past the displays in the little window shops, past kids having a summer celebration of something lovingly meaningless, imagining the fake sugar on his tongue, sliding down his throat and filling the hole in his heart. He bought a birthday candle instead, smoke swirling up and vanishing into the atmosphere.

Seconds or hours later, the candle was more wick than wax and so Stan dropped it to the ground, twisting and landing on the floor with a little bounce. He crushed it under his boot like a cigarette. 

He moves his foot and sees the little pile of powdered blue and black. “Happy birthday, Ford,” He says to it, not bothering to mention himself. Poking the pile, the colors become more mixed and, somehow, Stan feels a little better when seeing the blue fully around the black and the black fully around the blue. 

Stan takes the package with the rest of the candles in it out of his pocket and seeing it and everything that it stands for gives him a headache. He goes over to a small kid on the pier and hands him the package, “Here ya go, kid.” The kid sends him a confused look but goes and runs off. 

The great ball of flames that it is, the sun burns and brightens and reflects off the waves and sends glitters washing up to the shore. Taking a deep breath, Stan leaves. 

-

Rivers of smoke drifted upwards from the tip of the gun, clouds solidifying into heaviness, tangible evidence at what he had just done. The bullet soared through the clouds becoming condensation, sweat on his fingertips, a wicked gracefulness that kept its trajectory. A muffler had attached itself to his throat, holding tight and not letting any noise or breath come out of his lips. The bullet flew like a comet and struck the beating heart of his attacker. 

Yes, the bullet had been fired in self defense. Did that make the sinking of his heart any less painful? No, it didn’t. It really didn’t. 

Hal Forrester shot a gun for the first time, probably not for the last time. Stanley Pines has never shot a gun (at least that’s what he keeps telling himself). 

The man is lying on the ground now. Stan could practically see his soul leave his body, rising up and drifting to someplace other than here. Feeling like a ghost himself, Stan walks over to him, feet feeling like miles, and drops the gun someplace other than here. He doesn’t pay attention to it. He grabs the man’s arm and drops it again. The red hot anger that encompassed this man was gone. He’s cold now. 

Stan pulls down his sleeve over his hand and grabs the man’s arm with the makeshift mitten instead. Now he can’t tell the temperature of the man. He drops the arm near the man’s side and pats his pockets. In his jeans, a singular lighter and a few pesos. 

He keeps both. He doesn’t even see if the lighter works, just shoves it into his front pocket on his shirt. The one over his heart. Maybe he can light a cigarette with it. Or a dumpster fire. Stan doesn’t know. The night is still young. The stars still burn their gases that Stan’s forgotten the names of and the moon winks down at him. Ford’s out there, seeing the same sky, pointing each one out and giving them names and stories that Stan doesn’t know. Doesn’t need to know because Ford knows them. And sometime they’ll be together again for Ford to tell Stan all about them. 

Stan doesn’t see a falling star to wish on but chooses a pale yellow one anyway, wishing that he was someplace other than here, someone other than Hal Forrester, someone who wouldn’t have done what he had to do tonight.

-

Prometheus was a little bitch.

Bringing fire down to humans? A dick move. At least in Stanley's (very recent) opinion, created only on his experiences in the last two minutes.

Fire can be the only thing used to describe the boiling in his stomach, the heat in his veins, the anger in his fists, and the scars in his heart. And boy, did it suck.

His brother had laid him on the surgery table, reaching in with his bare six-fingered hands, and ripping his heart out. Stanford could point every nook and cranny, even make new arteries if he wanted to. He stuck his hands in, shook out the dust and spiderwebs and crushed it all in his palm like glass. All while Stan was sitting there paralyzed, letting Ford leave him gasping for life under his hands. 

Stan wanted the journal to burn. Reduced to nothing but ashes. Ashes blown away with a swipe of a hand. Stan wanted --needed-- to manifest the forest fire inside of him. If Ford didn’t want these journals so badly, Stan had the perfect solution.

Of course Ford had a different definition of perfect (always had) and attacked Stan. Stan would be surprised if Ford couldn’t see the flames dressed in the black of Stan’s pupil, reaching out and flicking the underneath of his eyelids, scorching his eyelashes, racing a trail down his cheeks like tears and enveloping him whole.

A kick to his chest and the fire that was burning through his blood became concentrated in one spot on his back, hot, hotter than anything he’s ever felt in his life. Searing through him and he’s screaming. Screaming. Yelling. Anything. He falls forward and the embers inside him sizzle out. He can’t process anything else. 

He punches Stanford, blazing heat striking straight from his shoulder through his heart. The portal is as bright as the sun, with a blue that is hotter. Stan doesn’t think, he pushes. Maybe it’s Icarus. Fate. God’s idea of a joke. But Ford falls. Gravity becomes personified, crawling from the portal and cart-wheeling with long fingers reaching out, selfishly grabbing whatever—whoever—is in sight. Planets and comets. Pushed and pulled with no regard for their past lives. Their life force being bent to burn wherever Gravity decides.

There’s blood-chilling screams that echo in Stan’s ears and leaves him pounding on the ice cold metal of the portal hours or minutes later. 

Stan feels like a shell of a man, snow leaking in him from the storm outside, starting at his feet and filling up until it’s at his head, needing someplace to go and choosing his eyes, red hot tears carving his cheeks. 

-

Somewhere in the last ten years, Stan remembers going back to the Stan O’ War. Telling himself that he had only been there to say goodbye.

It was Fall when he went, dry wind sweeping through orange and red leaves. The waves had been rougher than usual, pushing the hull and spraying mist on his skin, pooling together enough to drip off his arm and down to the ground below. 

Matches laid heavy in his back pocket, picked up from dollar store on the side of the road someplace in the last few days. (He had lost the lighter he had found.) It took four matches to light a fire yesterday. One was left. The cheap glue holding the cardboard together was peeling apart, stringy and white and falling apart at the seams. Barely holding on. Stan could relate. 

In the moment, Stan hadn’t known what had come through him to make the next decision. How to use his last match. Now, Stan can see that it had simply been an act of nature, fate, destiny, whatever self-fulfilling prophecy had been laid before him coming to fruition. In the same way that trees were wood and brothers were family, Stan  _ was _ fire. 

An uncontrollable mass, sparking, hissing, crawling and consuming everything in its path. His arteries bleed the same red as tendrils of flame, becoming gasoline for the quick lighter of his heart, muscles and tendons becoming wood, bones branches, his organs sizzling until they rise up out of his mouth and nose and eyes as smoke. He could destroy, ruin lives. But didn’t people say that fire always helped things? Like trees and plants and flowers come back healthier than before? Stan couldn’t answer that for himself. Not yet. Maybe not ever. 

Ford would be the ocean. Standing as stubborn as ever as the perfect antithesis to Stan, Ford could be nothing but the ocean. Calm, methodical. Roaring. All consuming. Dragging down. A feeling of home. Capillaries become the dregs, slipping and being carried with each wave, containing the trash, garbage, of Ford’s life: his mistakes, regrets, angers, lost brothers. His fists would definitely become tidepools, destructful and unexpected. If Ford found a new obsession for the week, he would swallow it whole, keep it as a part of him, learn its every inch as it was swirled and thrashed with his waves. Something great, but destined to be apart from Stan. 

But... in the end, no matter how different the two can be, water could cool and cool but not quite become ice and be able to heal a burn, able to help a burn tattooed on his back, one that could seep beneath the physical skin.

And the match. The last match that Stan had gotten all those years ago in some dollar store. He used it to light a fire. Transfer the heat lingering beneath his fingertips to the broken, crumbling wood of the Stan O’ War. Something about the Fall afternoon made that fire catch instantly, blazing, a burning ball of sun sitting on top of the ocean. Melting the plastic of the sail, contorting and warping the metal screws and nails. Inside, Stan could feel nothing but a warmth, a warmth that was slightly too hot to be comfortable but not hot enough to do something about it. Emptiness, others could call it. 

Stan remembers clearly watching a piece of flaming wood fall and hit the water, snuffling out and drifting beneath the waves and settling someplace he couldn’t quite see. He had stared at that spot for a long time, long enough for the water to turn black and the sun drift off. 

-

Dipper and Mabel Pines were a hearth. 

Comforting and lovely. Home. He remembers being there for their birth, twin faces glowing brighter than anything Stan has ever seen before. Two forces to reckoned with currently sitting in his kitchen, banging on the table, raising hell for some pancakes at nine o’clock at night. 

“Alright, alright. You guys win. I’ll make some Stan Cakes.” Cheers. Yells. You’d think that it had just been announced that a day dedicating niblings had been created. Or perhaps a law that required great uncles to become personal pancake chefs to any screaming children. 

“Breakfast for dinner! The chains of time holds no bounds on us any longer!” Stan is scared that Mabel is going to start standing on the table from the way this speech is going. She’s already bouncing on her chair. 

Dipper yells and they run off with thumps pounding in their wake. Stan sighs and combines the needed ingredients. Perhaps sugar added wouldn’t be the best idea. Well, it was too late now. 

Stan makes quick work of mixing and takes a second to light the stove. He has to wiggle the knob back and forth a few times for the flame to take to the gas. Small, blue flames start heating up the pan and Stan watches it for a few seconds, feeling nostalgic for long ago home-made breakfasts. He globs some pancakes on the pan. 

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel careens into Stan’s side, knocking him a few steps with the spatula waving around in his hand. “Dipper has a really good hiding place and I can’t find him.”

Stan sets down the spatula at the unasked question. “You two created a game of hide and seek that fast?”

“Yes! And I need help.”

Understanding the seriousness of a game of hide and seek, Stan nods. “Don’t wait here then! Let’s go!” 

They start with the obvious hard spots first. The roof. Outside. Soos’s break room. Various closets. Stan checks some harder spots to either find Dipper or give Mabel some ideas for their next game. Blazing a path through the whole house, Mabel has taken to yelling silly things in an attempt to have Dipper make some sort of noise. 

Moonlight seeps through the Mystery Shack’s gift shop area. Stan scratches his head, “I don’t know what to say, pumpkin, he’s a small kid.”

Stan can practically see the lightbulb appearing above Mabel’s head, shining almost as bright as her smile. “That’s it! The vents!”

Stan has to admit, that’s a good idea for a hiding spot. He follows Mabel over to the nearest one and helps her take off the screws. He hears the shuffling of Mabel crawling through the vents and then the yell that informs him that Dipper has been found and saddened that his great spot had been discovered.

“You had Stan’s help, so we should actually do another round of me hiding so it’s fair.” Stan gives a soft chuckle as he makes his way back to the kitchen with a shake of his head. 

Billowing from the kitchen, big and grey and awful smelling, was smoke. “Hot Belgium Waffles!” The pancakes were burning, black, and appearing closer to rocks than anything else. He used an oven mitt to set the pan in the sink and put water on it, the smoke puffing out one final breath with a loud sizzle before dissipating into the air above him, settling in a space against the roof. Stan throws open a window and coughs part of his lung out of it. He swears he sees some embers come out and hit the ground below. 

“Woah, who turned on the fog machine?”

“Did you burn the pancakes, Grunkle Stan?”

Stan turns around with a show-teller smile and wiggling fingers. A twitch runs through his shoulder. “Hades’ puppies of liquified fire burst through the ground and stole the pancakes! Said their boss have heard the legends of how great my food was and wanted some for himself! So, uh, now there’s no Stan Cakes. Because the fire puppies stole them.”

Dipper points to the black pancakes sitting in the sink. “What are these then?”

“Your next birthday presents if you aren’t careful!” He grabs the heads of both of them, now looking significantly more tired after their game, and shoves them (gently) towards the door. “Scram!” And as an afterthought, “Brush your teeth or something.”

“Goodnight, Grunkle Stan!” They say together, going up the steps towards the attic. Their voices light something in Stan that had been dormant before the summer started. Coals that had been black, reddening, glowing, an ice thirty years old melting off.

Stan smiled.

-

Stanford was steaming.

It reminded Stan of the ocean on a foggy day, clouds low and turning over in tune with the waves, mixing and becoming serene, holding secretes and what was lurking beyond.

Except. Except Ford was not simply mysterious, confused, or whatever literary symbolism that could be argued. He was closer to a pot of water boiling over, becoming lava as it surpasses the metal of the pot, churning over and consuming, destroying, an utter furnace of anger and resentment brewing for thirty years. Volcanic rock thrown to the surface. Stanford Pines was angry at Stanley Pines. 

Stan had thought that the fire inside him had died a long time ago, snuffed out by a blizzard snow. But, there were sparks. Flying off of the eruption that is Ford, taking to his heart as easy as gasoline. Stan felt that same anger, coursing through him, warming his fingertips, as unfamiliar and familiar as his childhood home. 

Scorching footprints all the way down to the basement, Stan found Ford stooping over in a chair, waves rolling over magma. The same chair Stan had been using for the last three decades. The majority of his life.

“Stanford,” The nickname,  _ Ford _ ,  _ Sixer _ , still feel foreign on his tongue. Like he’s speaking spanish again. “You can’t keep hanging out with the kids. You’re dangerous.” They were a hearth. Stan used to think Ford was one too. 

“They’re my niblings too, Stanley.” Ford doesn’t even bother to look up. 

A buzzing through his heart. “You’re dangerous,” He repeats.

Ford’s scratching of his pen stops suddenly. “ _ I’m _ dangerous?”

“Your studies,” Stan corrects, “The paranormal. You know that’s what I meant.”

Ford hums something sour. “Hmm. I do not control what they wish to do.”

_ God,  _ Stan forgot how frustrating Ford was. “Why do you have to fight me on this? I thought we could at least agree on Dipper and Mabel’s safety, again  _ their safety _ , at least.”

Ford turns around, a storm in his eyes. Lighting strikes. Somewhere, a boat catches on fire. “I don’t believe that is what this conversation is really about.” 

“What?”

He stands, six-fingered hands clasped in front of him. Bubbles boiling hot, rising from the ocean floor, beyond the depths man has seen, unmapped and uncharted. “I believe you are just jealous of them no longer looking up at you like you hung the moon. Someone waltzing in and exposing your faulty wires. You have to share the starlight and you’re scared you’ll be left behind.”

Not even knowing if Ford is right or not, Stan shakes his head, drowning, gasping for air. “What? N-No. That stuff is dangerous- you’ve- you have seen what’s done to our family right?”

Clouds darken. “Get out of my lab, Stanley.”

It’s snowing somewhere, Stan can feel it in his bones. Snowing. Snowing, filling up the space. Empty, empty space.

-

“Stanley, you’ll forget everything, not just your memories, but essestianly, your entire  _ being _ .” 

Stan doubts that the fire eating him from the inside can ever be gone. Snow still flurried inside him, dancing between the flames grasping at his ribcage. Stan doubts those will leave either. Stan tosses Ford his suit jacket, hoping he won’t notice any burn marks. “This is what has to be done.”

A jacket that is as red as fire is thrown at him, smelling of the ocean. Stan tugs it over his head. Stan catches burn marks across Ford’s neck, flitting over a tattoo that Stan can’t quite see. They look fresh. “Did Bill do those to you?”

Six fingers jerk up and flutter over the markings, a glazed look in Ford’s eyes as they exchange glasses. “I’ve endured worse.”

Stan tugs on Ford’s jacket. It’s heavier than it looks. “There’s something about burns… they are a different kind of pain.” Ford’s head snaps his way with a haunted look. He stays silent, though. 

They finish getting dressed and stand at the prison bars, waiting for Bill to come back. In the distance, a deep pounding of footsteps.

“Stanley,” Ford stays soft, speaking in a near perfect imitation of Stan’s own voice. “Before… before whatever happens next, I, uh. Um. Thank you. I can’t do that enough.”

Snow flurries harding and hitting the ground as ice, steaming and puddling. Stan talks in Ford’s voice. It’s easier that way. Almost like he’s playing a character. Another Mr.Mystery. “I love you, Sixer.”

“I love you, Lee.”

An almost snap of the fingers and Stan calls out, breath burning his throat on the way out, steaming and floating up to the ceiling, the hole in the sky. Ford’s acting is a little stiff, a watered down Stan. Stan keeps his mind blank, trying not to think of the children over to the side and yelling at him, of Ford in a suit being thrown to the ground. Stan can barely remember a time of Ford ever wearing a suit and now he won’t ever get the chance to remember it again. But it’s okay. It’s okay. 

Bill Cipher doesn’t suspect a thing. His hand burns blue, a star in a foreign galaxy, a galaxy where Ford doesn’t know the stars, the stories behind the stars, and the space between them. Burning gases they don’t have on the periodic table. Reality mixing with fiction, producing reactions they aren’t able to predict. They’re both scientists now, aren’t they? Huh. 

Bill has four fingers. Maybe that’s why he can’t notice Stan doesn’t have six. They’re burning hot, as hot as a brand on his back, searing skin and holding their hands together, a handshake - a deal. 

The world is black and white and Bill is as yellow as the sun. Just as hard to look at. Snaking fingers and tendrils of terror leap out at Stan. What if this doesn’t work?  _ What if this doesn’t work _ ? 

But here he is, sitting in the same chair as always, hitting paddle ball, as carefree as ever, using whatever mind powers he has here to have it hit every time. Bill comes and does his thing, screaming yelling. Stan doesn’t bother trying to burn energy trying to listen to him. He’s going to forget it all in a second anyway.

However, he does punch Bill. The opposite of punching a brother, like punching a bully but amplified to the tenth degree. His fist burns, hotter than when they were just shaking hands. Blue fire bleeds from the pores of his skin, between his fingers. He shifts his hands back and forth and sees them dance against his calluses. What was his favorite song? He can’t remember. 

A punch stained suit lifts off of his gyrus, soaring towards the blue fire. His high school follows. Middle school. Elementary school. Shermie. A baby wrapped in a cloth. Ma. A woman’s face holding him close after he was crying. He can’t remember why. Pa. A fist shaking towards him, cold pavement, and a face that’s just out of his grasp. 

Neurons running through grey matter, lost in a maze. Synapses unable to follow. He can’t remember where he lives but he knows Fire. What’s inside him. All around. Insatiable. Blue’s engulfing him, taking and taking.

What kind of toothpaste does he use? Fire. There’s Fire all around him. Hearth. Dipper and Mabel. Oh, god. He loves them. He grabs the picture of them off of the shelf to the side. He doesn’t know when he hung it up. He is warmed inside, something covering him while he whole word burns. Burns and burns. Smoke rising up. Something about a bird. Phoenix? He doesn’t remember. 

He swears he smells something from somewhere, unable to put a finger or anything else on it, on the memory. 

Fire. It’s comforting almost. Familiar amongst everything. Like it’s been there. Inside him. All along. From the beginning of time to now. Warmth. A heart’s smoke rising up from somewhere. He closes his eyes against the blue. And then nothing.

-

“A boat on fire! Now, that’s an abnormality in itself!”

Ford, who had just paid the tab for a new sail, was not amused. He wore a weak imitation of Stan’s voice, “‘Ford, let’s get closer to the beings of pure fire, our boat of flammable stuff won’t catch on fire.’”

Stan laughed with a shove on Ford’s shoulder. “Hey, you’re the one that listened to me!” 

Ford laughed along but made Stan carry the sail back to the boat anyway while he tore open a pack of jelly beans. “We have to hurry back so we don’t miss the call with the niblings.” Man with multiple PhDs or not, he was pretty incoherent when in sight of jelly beans. 

“They’re a hearth.” Stan doesn’t know where that came from. Most likely a relic of himself pre-memory wipe, an instinct boiling over. That happened sometimes. Like his fingers reaching a bat when awoken in the middle of the night. But Ford stops walking and looks at him with wide eyes and Stan just knows that he hasn’t said that out loud before.

“Where does that come from, Stan?” His voice is soft, like water lapping against the sand, just as heavy. His jelly-bean-purple tongue is kind of distracting. 

“I dunno, must be past Stan’s thoughts.” Current Stan looks out at the water, the sun sending glitters down the shore. He thinks of another day at the beach, just out of reach through blue flames. 

“It’s accurate, though.”

They continue walking again, a warmth spreading from his center to his limbs, blue growing to become red. 

Stan shifts the folded sail from one arm to the next. “I always thought you were the ocean. I was the fire.”

Ford stops again. Stan only notices a few steps later, and stops suddenly, with a turn towards Ford. His jelly beans are shoved in his pocket now. However, he doesn’t say anything. Stan feels like he needs to continue, embers flying like saliva from his mouth.

He explains their whole life from his spotty perspective, going on the burning in his gut more than anything. The fire that has always sat there between his bones, sometimes dormant, sometimes not. Ice beneath his skin that felt like a plague. How Ford felt to him in comparison, a drought for thirty years, still stinging in his ten year old wounds. “I learned later that I could never belong on a boat, being what I was. I dunno. I guess things have changed.”

Somewhere in the gut spilling, they ended up on a bench on the side of the road. A car drove by. Ford’s quiet for a long, few heartbeats. His voice is almost carried away with a breeze. “I always thought it was the other way around.”

Stan follows Ford’s gaze towards some birds as he continues. “You were practically born in the water, salt where strands of DNA should be. Maybe an excess of aquaporins.” Ford smiles to himself like he said a joke. “I thought of myself as fire, consuming, taking. Ruining what’s closest to me. Burning too bright. It could never last like that.”

Stan lays a hand on Ford’s back, five fingers splayed, rubbing circles. Ford mirrors this. “So, what does that make us? What do you get combining water and fire?”

Ford hums, twisting thoughts in his mouth, “Smoke? Some left over logs?”

“Smoke! I like it! Because we’re all grey and stuffy.”

The comforting circles turn into a playful shove. “Hey, watch it!”

They share a laugh and fall into silence, filled with the ocean waves.

“Crap!” Stan looks over in alarm to see Ford looking at his watch. “We’re late for Dipper and Mabel!”

“Crap? More like, ‘Oh, shit!’”

They sprint back to their boat, freshly bought sail flying behind them like a cape, waves still churning, bubbles still rising, lifes still burning. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
